Why were McCutcheon's first few years so good (2007 FCS Title Game, 2007 NCAA Hockey Tournament, 2008 MBB NIT Finals) and his last few years... not so great?

How would you critique his hiring, firing, and overall performance? How would you compare his performance to Frank McInerney, Bob Marcum, Ian McCaw, and Ryan Bamford? You can choose to accept hindsight bias or attempt to view it from the time of the event, both would be interesting.

I'd say the good:
Hiring Travis Ford and Don Brown
Moving up to FBS

The bad:
Keeping Steve Lappas and hiring John Micheletto and Charley Molnar

Why were McCutcheon's first few years so good (2007 FCS Title Game, 2007 NCAA Hockey Tournament, 2008 MBB NIT Finals) and his last few years... not so great?

How would you critique his hiring, firing, and overall performance? How would you compare his performance to Frank McInerney, Bob Marcum, Ian McCaw, and Ryan Bamford? You can choose to accept hindsight bias or attempt to view it from the time of the event, both would be interesting.

I'd say the good:
Hiring Travis Ford and Don Brown
Moving up to FBS

The bad:
Keeping Steve Lappas and hiring John Micheletto and Charley Molnar

Also, both McCutcheon and Brown were hired in February of 2004 by UMass. It's always been a bit of a point of contention just how much McCutcheon actually had to do with hiring Brown; Brown was really UMass' guy before they announced the hiring of McCutcheon as AD.

If McCutcheon doesn't have the Brown hire on the plus side of his ledger, he really didn't accomplish much of anything in over a decade as AD at UMass.

So I just heard from multiple people a theory that his performance decline later in his tenure might have been due to losing his son.

Apparently his son died in 2006 and obviously that's a very traumatic thing to go through. I totally empathize with him knowing that now. That's truly a terrible thing to happen to happen to someone.

I'll never be happy with the performance under his tenure, but I certainly don't blame him for being out of sorts after that. A big emotional impact - especially losing your kid - can really have a toll on a person.

I will say, that if I was in his shoes I think I would have stepped down. It's just such a cut throat industry that I'm not sure I'd want to be in that position while trying to cope with the loss of a child. But what happened, happened. Obviously he felt committed to his job and thought he could still perform it to the best of his ability.

I don't excuse the university from not taking action against him sooner though. Empathize with him, yes... but ultimately if he can't do the job up to a standard, it's time for him to go.